Death at too tender an age

Our opinion: A 7-year-old boy is the victim of a South End car crash. How many more such incidents will happen there, amid heavy traffic and a crowded public housing project?

The saddest words, and the most poignant message, you could possibly encounter in Albany last week were on the small sign attached to an orange cone down by the Ezra Prentice public housing project on South Pearl Street. That’s where Qazir Sutherland, just 7 years old, was struck and killed by a car as a Father’s Day cookout was wrapping up.

“You didn’t die for nothing,” the note to him says. “There will be change.”

Let’s hope so. Let’s demand it, in fact.

In an impoverished neighborhood where vulnerability is seemingly everywhere, and where death comes too early and too easily, Qazir’s life needs to count for something beyond a traffic statistic. It will count when a population that’s too convenient to overlook and too easy to scorn gets the protection and respect it deserves.

And to think all that would take is crosswalks and traffic lights — the basic accoutrements of public safety that are commonplace where downtown begins a mile to the north and across so much of the city.

Little wonder that Qazir was run over along one of Albany’s major thoroughfares, where you walk a quarter of a mile before you encounter a crosswalk and just a single stoplight in that part of the South End where Ezra Prentice is located. All the while, cars zip by and 18-wheelers drive in and out of the nearby Port of Albany.

Qazir now stands in sad, dubious company. Albany Common Council President Carolyn McLaughlin, who lives in the South End, estimates that at least 10 kids have been hit by cars on that stretch of South Pearl in recent years. She goes on to say all the right things, and makes particular note of a reassurance from Police Chief Steve Krokoff that the city no longer will ignore the needs of a neighborhood so packed with kids that about 30 of them were right there outside Ezra Prentice when Qazir was killed.

Crosswalks, then. Crosswalks and stoplights, now, for the summer months, when kids like Qazir will be out playing each night until dusk.

Not far away, where South Pearl Street runs into the heart of the city, the talk is all about how best to develop the land where the convention center was supposed to have been built. There’s no shortage of lofty ideas of how to lure more people — and their money, of course — to that part of the state capital.

No such challenges at Ezra Prentice, where recent renovations have made that housing complex an especially popular one for people with young families. Among them is Falonda Haggray, Qazir’s mother.

“No mother should have to go through what I’m going through,” she says.

16 Responses

A. Parents need to be parents and teach their children not to play in or around the street. They also need to educate them on how to cross the street alone.

B. We need a more stringent licensing system. We put far too many unqualified people on the streets who simply shouldn’t be driving.

C. When someone kills or injures another with a car there should be charges. In this case they should be Manslaughter. We live in a state where the punishment for having 8 bullets in a gun is greater than killing someone with a car.

D. We need to restructure or cities to make them less crowded. Assure there are green spaces on every block. Yes, reducing the population density will provide a better living environment and lower the crime rate. Just look at the statistics at DCJS. Highest Crime rates, NYC, then Albany, Schenectady, Erie (Buffalo) and Monroe (Rochester) Counties. The higher the population density the higher the crime rate. As a side note as population density increases the area also becomes more liberal. Which may explain why democrats do not want to address this problem.

Lastly, this is not only a Urban issue. Just yesterday a great man was taken from us while riding his bicycle. There have been other bicycle and pedestrian accidents in rural areas as well. Time for the TU editorial staff to get out of the city for a while.

Anybody who drives through this area on a consistent basis knows that the giant pink elephant in the room are the large amounts of unsupervised children running around at all hours. There is a traffic light at the corner of South Pearl and Mt. Hope Dr. right next to the playground and basketball court. While some residents use this traffic light to cross the street safely, many others do not. Instead, they cross by running out from behind cars parked along South Pearl St. Many times the children are not looking and are unsupervised. In this case, Qazir’s mom was on the opposite side of the road yelling at him to “run, run, run” across the street. (http://wnyt.com/article/stories/s3069316.shtml)

Where does the Times Union think another traffic light should go? The entire span of the complex is probably a quarter of a mile and there are already traffic lights at both ends.

A cluster of pedestrian injuries and deaths like this one and not limited to the inner city, so please stop pretending like they are. This same paper ran a story a month or so ago about a similar situation on Central Ave.
Crosswalks and traffic lights will help, but only if BOTH the vehicles and pedestrians follow them. I work in downtown Albany and I can tell you on a daily basis I see pedestrians jay walk or flat out IGNORE crosswalk walk/no walk signs.

I also observe many pedestrians that cross streets that don’t even bother to turn their heads to look for oncoming traffic.
A little personal responsibility goes a long way…after all, it’s your life on the line, no matter who has the right of way.

Not to sound cold hearted but why couldn’t his mother walk across the street and take his hand??
That 30 seconds would have made this a non story.
How do you think the driver of the vehicle feels?
They are probably devastated that they hit a child, but still where was the parent?? 20 feet away?

@ Charlie,regarding your point C,do you mean to say if I’m following the speed limit and a child runs out in front of my car,gets hit(injured or killed)I should face charges? Can you explain THAT to me? I work in the South End and frankly,with the blatant disregard most pedestrians have for traffic signals,I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents. RIP,Qazir.

Granted this blog is an opinion but I find it is root in the all to common wrappings of race baiting not unusual for the TU. It’ amusing that the ED staff has determined that “all it would take … to help the impoverished, vulnerable population the protection and respect it deserves is…crosswalks and traffic lights”. From the city line to First Ave there are five traffic lights, new road paving, new sidewalks, a new playground, newly renovated housing and a housing police force dedicated to just them. What does this or a potential convention center and its job opportunity for Albany residents have to do with this ACCIDENT? My friend was killed on a bike when he was a kid emerging from a driveway into traffic. It was his fault and it was an ACCIDENT. The city is not on notice. Parents are. The day your kid is born you are responsible. The biggest problem in this part of Albany and many parts of the country just like it is, the parents forgot that.

I hope the people who have offices in the Albany Housing Authority’s Taj Mahal, on South Pearl Street, and who are responsible for the placement of public housing buildings so near main commercial thoroughfares in Albany like lower Madison Avenue, Henry Johnson Boulevard, and the like, are reading this blog thread.

Someday, the legacy of putting public housing in the least desirable locations of our urban centers will be looked upon with as much distain as sending our young men and women (many of whom grew up in public housing) off to war in far off hell holes for no legitimate reasons…

Yes yes yes people, those horrible black parents are the reason this happened. Why don’t you just come out and say it? If this were 10 dead white kids in Loudonville or near Buckingham Pond I think we all know what the reaction would be, lots of traffic lights and many crosswalks. I don’t disagree that there are bad parents, but they come in all colors, shapes and socio-economic classes.

Jeffrey, you are the only one who has injected race into this conversation. Please ask yourself why you did so.

Fact of the matter is that a child was struck by a car on a street that already does have crosswalks, apparently urged to run by their own parent. This is a tragically preventable incident regardless of which neighborhood it occurred in, or what tone the victim’s skin was.